The holidays are a time of merriment, festivity — and, for many, tense family gatherings.
People think, ”’How do I deal with relatives who, at times, are intrusive or trigger me or say things that are abusive?” said Mark Rapaport, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association.
When trying to defuse stressful family dynamics, some people use a strategy called “gray rocking.”
The point is to “act boring, like a gray rock,” said Samantha Whiten, a Maryland-based clinical psychologist. “You do not give difficult people any potential ammunition.”
Is gray rocking actually a smart way to survive the holiday season? Here’s what experts said.
The gray rock method is perhaps best known as a tool for managing interactions with narcissistic, manipulative or otherwise toxic individuals. But it doesn’t have to be so extreme. It can be deployed “in any situation where you are trying to minimize conflict with somebody who you have to interact with,” Whiten said.
When gray rocking, you’re purposely making yourself uninteresting by politely offering short, non-committal responses rather than getting sucked into a high-drama exchange. The idea is to deprive the other person of the attention or reaction they want, prompting them to move on.
Imagine you’re invited to a holiday party with your whole family — including Uncle Bob, who gets under your skin. You don’t want to skip the party outright; you just want to de-escalate conversations with Bob so you can enjoy your evening. That’s where gray rocking might come in.
Maybe Bob corners you to talk politics. In previous years, you might have taken the bait and ended up in a shouting match. But when gray rocking, you’d sidestep conflict with a bland response, like, “Interesting opinion. How’s work?”
Rapaport said he’s not aware of published research on the technique’s efficacy, but said its objectives make sense.
“One of the keys in circumstances like this is not to emotionally engage,” he said.
Gray rocking can be helpful in a pinch. But particularly when practiced regularly, it can come at a cost to your emotional health and relationships, warned Darlene Lancer, a California-based marriage and family therapist.
“After a while, people get numb,” Lancer said. “They start shutting down to their own feelings of hurt or anger.”
The strategy can create distance between you and your loved ones.
“I don’t recommend it, really, in a relationship that you want to last and grow,” Lancer said. If you care about the long-term health of a relationship, “the ideal is always to be more authentic” and talk through your issues, she said. (And of course, if a relationship is truly harmful or dangerous, it may be best to leave it or limit contact.)
Even in the short-term, stonewalling someone may anger or upset them, particularly if they didn’t realize their comments bothered you in the first place, Rapaport added. Great Aunt Sally may think she’s just making friendly conversation when she asks, yet again, when you’re going to have kids, even if it feels like an attack to you.
Polite directness may get you further in these situations, Rapaport said.
“Sometimes you acknowledge it and say, ‘I hear what you want to talk about, but it’s not something I want to discuss at this time,’” he suggested.
To set yourself up for success at gray rocking, plan ahead. “People really do well with having a specific goal,” Whiten said, so think about exactly how you’d like to handle difficult situations likely to arise at your gatherings. That way, when the moment comes, you can fall back on your plan instead of responding emotionally.
Consider which interactions tend to be hardest for you, and think of a few placid responses to keep in your back pocket. This can be as simple as responding to your mother’s unsolicited advice with a neutral comment like, “Thanks, I’ll think about it,” instead of snapping, Lancer said.
You might also recruit similarly minded loved ones to help if things start to get heated, Rapaport suggested.
“Contact folks ahead of time and say, ‘Hey, if you see this happening with me, pull me away,’” he said.
Make sure to keep drug and alcohol consumption in check, since substances make it much harder to keep a level head.
Finally, try to focus on the good — the people who you do want to see at the party — and channel a little empathy toward the difficult figures in your life, Rapaport said.
“These actions that trigger huge emotional responses in you may be a little less likely to do so because you’re thinking about their vulnerability, their weaknesses, their inability to know how to engage with others,” he said.
A little generosity of spirit can go a long way. It is the holidays, after all.
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(AP Illustration / Peter Hamlin)
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is losing ground on Monday at the start of a week full of economic reports that could drive where interest rates, and thus stock prices, go.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in afternoon trading, coming off its first losing week in the last three. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 137 points, or 0.3%, as of 12:55 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower.
Technology stocks, including companies in the artificial-intelligence industry, were among the heaviest weights on the market following their scary swings last week.
Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the face of the AI boom, rose 1.7%. It was one of the strongest forces pushing upward on the S&P 500 and cushioning some of the impact from losses elsewhere on Monday after dropping 4.1% last week.
Oracle sank another 1.9% following its 12.7% tumble last week, which was its worst in more than seven years. Broadcom fell 5.1%.
AI stocks have been shaky on worries that all the billions of dollars flowing into chips and data centers may not produce a big-enough payoff of profits and productivity to make it worth it. The doubts are causing cracks for the industry, whose earlier surges was the main driver for the U.S. market’s rally to records.
Besides AI, the main focus on Wall Street this week will be what several big updates on the U.S. economy’s health say.
On Tuesday will come the jobs report for November, and economists expect it to show employers added 40,000 more jobs than they cut during the month. Thursday will bring an update on the inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling, and economists expect it to show inflation was at 3.1% last month, still higher than households and policymakers would like.
Such data is under the microscope because the Federal Reserve is trying to figure out if a slowing job market or high inflation is the bigger problem for the economy. The Fed is in a potentially tough spot because fixing one of those problems by moving interest rates would likely worsen the other in the short term.
The hope on Wall Street is that the job market weakens, but only by a little: enough to get the Fed to lower interest rates but not so much that a recession swamps the economy. Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give the economy and prices for investments a boost, even if they also may worsen inflation.
“With the Fed still appearing to be more focused on labor-market weakness than inflation, we’re likely facing a ‘bad news is good’ scenario for the jobs report,” according to Chris Larkin, managing director, trading and investing, at E-Trade from Morgan Stanley.
“As long as the numbers don’t suggest employment is falling off a cliff,” that would mean the market would likely welcome soft numbers, he said.
The spotlight will be brightest on the unemployment rate, not the overall job growth numbers, because the latter is feeling downward pressure from a drop-off in immigrant workers. Economists expect Tuesday’s report to show the unemployment rate at 4.4%, which would keep it near its highest and worst level since 2021.
Treasury yields eased in the bond market ahead of the updates. A report earlier on Monday morning also said that a measure of manufacturing strength in New York state unexpectedly weakened, when economists expected to see continued growth.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.18% from 4.19% late Friday.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, shares of iRobot tumbled 72.6% after the maker of Roomba vacuums said holders of its stock will likely face a total loss after it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection over the weekend. The company has reached an agreement with its primary contract manufacturer, Picea, to buy it through a process supervised by a U.S. bankruptcy court.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe following weaker finishes in Asia.
Indexes fell 1.3% in Hong Kong and 0.6% in Shanghai after the Chinese government reported a drop in investment in factory equipment, infrastructure and other fixed assets. It’s the latest signal that demand in the world’s second-largest economy remains weak.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 sank 1.3% after a quarterly survey of big manufacturers by the central bank showed a slight improvement in sentiment. That could encourage the Bank of Japan to go ahead with a hike to interest rates.
AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Specialists Alex Weitzman, left, and Meric Greenbaum work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader passes by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader works near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Trader William Lawrence works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Thursday, Dec. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
